Fan-tailed cuckoo

[wigz]

This one has quite a lot of noise but it flew away before I could adjust my settings to the shade and this is my only image of this species.


D800, Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 + 1.4x TC @420mm. 1/1000, f/5.6 ISO 3200

[Isac]

Well done wigz. Lovely colours and good detail. I don't have a problem with the noise myself but if you want to have a play, you could always reduce it in PS. I prefer to use a freebie plugin called
Freeware Boundary Noise Reduction from Colormancer rather than Photoshops own NR filter.
It does a great job. I notice also that your image is really small at only 89kb so if you increase that to about 250kb you'll see some improvement in IQ. Is there a reason for having a small image? Cheers, Greg.

[wigz]

I normally stick to ps quality 8 and only bother fiddling with Save for web if it's over 250k. I don't get the security issue with exif but I guess some people could go overboard with contact details.

[Isac]

All good wigz. Do you resize to 1024 before saving JPG at quality 8?

[wigz]

Yes Isac I resize it first. I realise I could use save for web to do it in one step, but normally I don't consider file size when saving jpg's for viewing, so it's just an ingrained habit.I'll have a look at that noise reduction plug-in.

[seaslug]

Beaut catch! I saw one the other day at the Arboretum but it was when I didn't have the camera.. always the way!

I still haven't got a decent shot of one.. do have the Pallid Cuckoo being fed by two different species of Honey-eater but the fan tail still eludes me.

[wigz]

Thanks Greg. I have some shots of the channel-billed and a partially obscured pheasant coucal. I'd like to get a koel but they seem to stick to high in trees. you probably don't see any of these down your way.

[Grumpy John]

This one has quite a lot of noise but it flew away before I could adjust my settings to the shade and this is my only image of this species.

All the birds I try to photograph fly away before I get the lens cap off . Well done Alan.

[sejac]

Great capture Alan. Eye contact, focus, color all there. I can't see any noise.

And Greg (Isac) is correct. These things can be fixed in Photoshop or Lightroom.

[wigz]

Thanks all for your kind words, There is more noise there than I like, but is not apparent at this size. I think a print would look ok. I applied as much noise reduction as I could without removing feather detail and the background is clean as the Nik software seems to be more aggressive in areas where there is no detail,